Awakening From the Bad Dream
Gratitude
Writer updates and coming releases, and contemplations on fortune and happiness and gratitude.
Most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.
-Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.
-The Big Book of AA
It is difficult to assemble a life in a pinch from the ground up. Many people have some partial experience of this challenge: immigrants or those that have recently left the military or folks moving to a new city. Even these examples are incomplete, however. Immigrants often have a community to join. Veterans and movers often have savings or degrees or imminent job opportunities.
People leaving rehab or psychiatric confinement or prison sometimes have none of these. Imagine the plight: once you’ve done the work of addressing whichever issues led to your separation from the world you must find a home. There are group homes and halfway houses which cater to people like you. They can be hopeful, or bleak, and sometimes they’re both at once. You need to find a job. It won’t be a good one but having $80 in your pocket come the weekend will seem like a priceless boon. After perhaps 6-12 months you might be in a position to buy a car (until now you’ve been walking and using public buses and begging rides off of slightly more stable characters). If you can avoid recidivism or relapse or backslide or psychiatric episode your life may truly begin to blossom… but most do not avoid these things. There are reasons that people generally end up in rehabs or prison cells, and those reasons lie close to the core of the psyche. It’s not impossible to effect a deep spiritual change and go from being a person who is lazy to one who is industrious, or from an impulsive person to a deliberate one, or to go from a hedonist to an altruist, but it is difficult. People in this situation often must make all of these changes and more before they can begin to feel a little security. Naturally, psychology treats the issue differently: it refers to Substance Use Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder and Anti-Social Personality Disorder and proscribes therapeutic interventions which are often worthless. Call the illness whatever and diagnose the etiology however you like: recovery from the condition of being a spousal abuser or a compulsive drug user or a thief or a puer aeternus requires a deep spiritual improvement (“a complete psychic change” in the words of the AA Big Book). Factors like family situation or educational attainment or genetic predisposition or abuse history may be useful in understanding certain aspects of these states (although often they are not) but they are never sufficient to explain their emergence. I regard it as a fact (which is deeply disliked by parts of modern psychology and the schools and the Left) that almost everyone in the United States has the opportunity to improve their lives, sometimes dramatically. The elements of personal choice and motivation are crucial for basically everyone. When speaking about children or large groups of policy subjects or statistical abstractions it can be constructive to treat causes or social factors as if they’re determinants, but this is rarely the case. That’s very good news for those who want to make their own way, and for all those who love and encourage them. It’s bad news for those whose ideology or institutional power or emotional identity depends upon a kind of spiritual underclass of invalids and dependents. I’ve never met a social justice warrior in the rooms of recovery. They wouldn’t make it. A belief that you can’t improve your situation (and that your status is the fault of others) might be brief consolation… but so is fast food for the morbidly obese. Both things are insidious and, eventually, deadly.
Modern society has given us unprecedented opportunities and miraculous tools but it has also introduced dozens of addictive inputs and made us comfortable enough to (mostly) ignore their malign influence. Just as every increase in national wealth increases the range of incomes, social media and corporate gyms and ubiquitous restaurants and kindles and streaming services increase the variety and range of hedonic adjustment available to people. Happy people these days are happier and busier and smarter than any people in the past but most people are not really happy. Most are fatter and more anxious and lonelier than our predecessors. This is a world of people adrift. There’s a vast range of happiness and health and fulfillment available to people nowadays and you don’t want to be on the low end. If your life isn’t what you will it to be-get to work.
These matters are not abstractions for me. I was in that place of addiction and aimlessness for years. I was one of those people whose lives had (effectively) ended and who was fortunate enough to have a new opportunity. I massively enjoy the commentary of Freddie DeBoer. He’s a great writer and a funny and profound social critic (the fact that I mostly disagree with his diagnoses and directions is irrelevant). Moreover, he knows what it’s like to burn one’s life to the ground and confront the smoking wreckage… and he’s succeeding. He’s a journalist with bipolar disorder who ruined his career and reputation and many relationships years ago and now he’s a successful and popular writer on Substack. He owns a house. He’s married, and they’re expecting their first child. Anyone who isn’t cheered by a story like that is probably someone who never found himself in a dark hole.
Which brings me right along to privilege, and gratitude. I’ll be releasing two essays which are nearly done: Job Search 4-The Feminization of American Work and Job Search 5-Class Privileges. I’ve written elsewhere about the asinine way we apply the concept of privilege in this country, so I’ll avoid retreading similar ground. It is my belief, after years of moving freely into and (mostly) out of the group which are known as ‘elites’ or ‘symbolic capitalists’ (
’s term), that one’s work is the most prominent signifier of privilege. The most consequential and lavish common privilege one can have is: to avoid having to work with your hands and your body, unprotected by credentials and degrees and lavish status and social circle. I’m certainly not claiming that every college graduate has it easy (I am one) but what I’m saying is that if you work in a job which mostly leverages knowledge or expertise or information manipulation or communication then you are, almost by definition, extraordinarily blessed. Since your achievements are due (in most cases) to some combination of parenting and childhood values and school quality and conscientiousness and family income, they are largely symptoms and expressions of privilege. I don’t say this to minimize or stigmatize your work-privileges are blessings and are nothing to feel ashamed of, as long as they’re well-used and acknowledged. Nevertheless, therapists and professors and graphic designers and doctors and nurses and lawyers and scientists and teachers and non-profit employees and accountants and bankers and journalists and social workers are privileged. They’re often insulated from some degree of financial risk and they don’t have to perform dirty or physically difficult or risky work for money.As an intelligent and educated (mostly self-educated, but that can be the best kind of education) and curious person I found myself in the position of rebuilding my life and performing warehouse work and temp jobs and commission-based sales gigs for years. There are millions of people in that condition. Not every person who’s not a symbolic capitalist is struggling. There are billionaires who never graduated college and own no credentials. There are millions of salespeople and contractors and firemen and police who are doing quite well. This is the United States, after all. Most folks are neither rich nor elite, though. Millions labor in the bottom half of the employment market (which is decidedly hierarchical-contemplate the prospect of unemployment, or a first date, as a male psychologist versus a male road crew worker). They work their asses off and linger on the edge of medical emergency and look forward to a ‘retirement’ (during which they will continue to work) supported by basic social security payments. They drive Ubers and clean motel rooms and stock shelves and hang drywall. There’s a widespread (and now often stated, in the aftermath of the election) feeling that such people tend to be foolish or unworthy in some way. When it comes to policymaking, especially, these workers are regarded as dupes at best and bigots at worst. In my experience they are usually neither. I have not been impressed by the goodness or the wisdom or the analytical rigor of the elites-rather the opposite. Because they have harder lives the underclass are often better people (and stronger) and they possess natural instincts for human psychology and policy sense which are strikingly absent among literature and sociology professors. As I said, I don’t wish to make the elites feel ashamed. I just wish they would recognize their exorbitant privilege and the distortions which often accompany their easy lives and comfortable social positions. I wish they were more self-aware, and I wish they were grateful.
More upcoming releases in A Locked Room:
The Schism of the Elites - Fracture Lines
Christmas Journalism Wishlist - What Journalists Might be Working On, if They Were Real
The Parable of the Black Numenoreans - A Warning Against Pathological Societies
Dr. Jordan Peterson once said that true friends are those with whom you can share word of tragedy and receive sincere sympathy (and possibly aid), and those with whom you can share news of a great victory or blessing and receive praise and celebration (rather than begrudging compliments, or envy). They are quite rare in my experience. Sympathy and praise are fairly common expressions, but it is discouraging how often they are perfunctory or insincere.
Conversely, people often share their accomplishments or bursts of fortune to provoke envy or resentment or longing in others. There are few things as awkward as watching one person gleefully share their ‘good’ news with another, obviously enjoying their momentary advantage, and watching the listener glare and try to repress their jealousy in order to satisfy the conventions of congratulations.
There are other reasons to share your good fortune, though, even with strangers. One might be as a means of informing others, or encouraging them (just as Freddie DeBoer encourages me). Your news might have a different effect on those similarly placed than you or higher. It might be a reminder how fortunate those people really are and how much they might have to be grateful for if they only reflect upon it. For years I have written on Substack (and off). I came to Florida years ago to enter rehab, and thereafter built my life. I’ve experienced jail, homelessness, psychiatric committal, and-worst of all-years of grinding labor, going to work and recovery meetings and suffering the indignities of debt collectors and loan apps and utilities cancellations and credit consolidators. When I served in Afghanistan life sometimes seemed bleak (especially in the winter months, as our combat tours drew to a close and the op tempo slowed to a crawl) but we all knew that, barring the fickle chaos of battle, we’d be leaving soon. Hope is much easier to maintain when there’s a destination in sight. During these years I had destinations, of a kind, but they were more like conditional goals, and often dashed plans, than firm milestones.
I found myself unemployed several months ago and ended up working a temp job so rote and unremarkable that it warrants no description. During these weeks I still felt grateful every morning to be alive and healthy and living in the United States… but being a low-status and essentially (after credit card consolidations and bills) broke man in the United States is a tiresome experience. I knew with time I could rise to a better position. I was working on finalizing a state teaching certification and had distant plans to return to grad school-but the daily reality was one of wage work and financial uncertainty. Even in that state I was far more fortunate than many others. I would sometimes get in my car late at night and go sit outside the gas station, watching people enter and leave. It was better than lying alone and contemplating the desperation of my position. I never had a panic attack in the front seat of my car, whereas I sometimes did lying in the darkness on my air mattress, trying to quiet my thoughts.
This week I was accepted as the assistant editor for two prison advocacy non-profit magazines (~120 pages of content each month, and about 100,000 readers). It’s not the job I was seeking (I didn’t actually know it existed before joining) when I entered the office-it’s 10x better. A few days in the office demonstrated my passion for public policy and my basic competence as a writer and an editor, and I was offered the position. It will be the most purposeful job I’ve had since being in the army, and it will be the most interesting and stimulating (and lucrative) job I’ve ever had, period.
If you already have such a job-be grateful. Many do not. You didn’t end up in the position due only to hard work and character and intelligence. Your placement in that role is a privilege, and a lavish one. There are 100,000 people cleaning cars and folding bedsheets who could probably do that job better than you, if given the advantages you have had.
If you don’t have such a job-don’t give up. This is still a bountiful country and one which rewards passion and effort. You might have to labor in drudgery for years before you find the opening or earn the degree or attend the interview that elevates your position but there’s value in that too. Life is work, and gratitude is happiness. Be grateful.
Congratulations on your job! You clearly worked hard to obtain it and it warms my heart to hear that it is so fulfilling to your passions. I've been blessed with a good job which I landed just prior to my partner losing his and experiencing two-plus years of soul crushing unemployment. It is indeed a precarious existence for the uncredentialed. Thankfully I've been able to support us in relative comfort. I subscribed to your Stack specifically because of your series on unemployment and job searching in contemporary America, and I look forward to reading the continuation.